Thus boldly boasted at the start of the year that I/we would focus on single-handedly starting a quality drive. After a lot of hard work, some hot air and a survey conducted with CQI and YouGov Stone, we staged a debate last May entitled ‘Whatever Happened to the ‘Q’ Word?’ Hosted brilliantly by Andrew Neil [...]
Category Archives: Banking
I’ve not been writing about Quality because there’s not much of it about
November 15, 2010 – 1:04 pm
An open letter to Gordon Brown, saviour of the world's banks, apart from Iceland, the UK and . . .
March 17, 2009 – 12:52 am
As Gordon and Alastair puff out their chests and iron their M+S Let’s Pretend We’re Businessmen suits (made in Indonesia) to host the G20 Global Summit on the global economy, a letter from Steven Katirai, whose Google search reveals him as a capital markets consultant based in the North East of England, has been doing the rounds [...]
The big money is at the end of the rainbow, same as it ever was
March 3, 2009 – 4:58 pm
Writing in Wilmott, Rudi Bogni argues that banker-bashing may be a convenient way to mask the inconvenient truth that the demands on our financial systems are unsustainable. Western productivity was not up to the task of generating sufficient wealth to fuel perpetual growth, nor is it likely to be. It required a collective suspension of [...]
Is Sir Jams Crosby is about to leap aboard another gravy train?
February 23, 2009 – 7:28 pm
Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the buses, one of the undead emerges to cause a train wreck. File this one under ‘you couldn’t make it up’ . . . . . By John J Kelly As we know from our unhealthy obsession with The Godfather, when Roman generals failed their [...]
Unless we kill them now, Zombie banks will roam the earth, eating our future and boring us witless
February 22, 2009 – 3:26 pm
The financial system as a whole is rotten. Predicated on the now-doghoused dogma that markets know best and light-touch regulation is all that’s needed to produce the best of all possible worlds, the regulatory structure failed to prevent banks, insurers and investment funds from acting recklessly. During the good times, investors as well as [...]